1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for virtualizing baseboard management controller (‘BMC’) operation in a host computer.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Computer systems today contain many and various types of components. To insure efficient and uninterrupted operation of such a computer system, operational characteristics of the computer system's components may be monitored. In some computer systems, for example, a baseboard management controller (‘BMC’) may monitor various components. A BMC is a microcontroller, typically embedded on a motherboard of a computer system, such a server. A BMC may interface with components of the computer system and with other computer systems in accordance with the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) architecture. The BMC manages the interface between system management software and platform hardware.
Different types of sensors embedded in a computer system may be configured to report to the BMC such parameters as temperature, cooling fan speeds, power status, operating system (OS) status, and so on. BMCs installed in today's computing systems, however, may have limited resources and limited capabilities, with few, if any, ways of augmenting such capabilities.